The next day, Park Juu and I left the dorm early in the morning. Manager Daeyeon came along for this trip to Daejeon too.

"It’s not even an official schedule. We can go by ourselves."

"You know safety comes first too, Iwol."

That was why I couldn’t refuse and ended up comfortably riding in the car Manager drove for us.

Everything was fine. Everything was great, except...

Why the hell did Choi Jeho come too?

Park Juu and I had planned to secretly meet up at the front entrance at dawn, but he showed up dragging Choi Jeho along without any warning. There was no way Jeho had just happened to come out without knowing anything; he was dressed suspiciously neat.

Still, since this was ultimately Park Juu’s business, I asked whether he was okay with all three of us going together. Park Juu readily said yes. And so Choi Jeho, who had joined us that very morning, spent the ride beside me enthusiastically stuffing himself with puffed rice snacks.

"What. You want one too?"

Our eyes met, and Choi Jeho pulled one out and held it toward me.

"I’m good."

"Suit yourself."

He took it back and tossed it into his own mouth. I couldn’t exactly snap at him, so I endured it.

"Just don’t get crumbs on Juu."

At my words, Choi Jeho glanced toward Park Juu sitting between us.

Oddly enough, Park Juu hadn’t taken the passenger seat. He insisted on sitting in the back instead. Then he kept fidgeting so much that when I asked what he actually wanted, this was how things turned out.

"He didn’t take motion sickness medicine, did he?"

"He said he didn’t want to today."

Park Juu, who had gotten into a long-distance car ride without taking motion sickness medicine, fell asleep like he’d passed out within five minutes. After the final broadcast and commemorative livestream the day before, he had to be exhausted. When we bribed him with baby potatoes from the rest stop, he barely managed to open his eyes and eat two.

"How many skewers did Jeho hyung buy...?"

"He’ll probably go do Stairway to Heaven for three hours later. Leave him alone."

Despite the criticism, Choi Jeho kept diligently devouring his sausage-and-rice-cake skewers. It was impossible to believe this was the same person who had just finished an entire bag of puffed rice snacks.

After even Manager finished his hot bar, the car started moving again.

"You don’t feel sick?"

"Maybe because I slept... I’m okay."

"If your stomach feels weird, drink the electrolyte drink. Kim Iwol bought it."

Choi Jeho shoved a plastic bottle into Park Juu’s hands.

"Still, let’s air the car out once. Food smells make motion sickness worse."

I rolled down the window on my side. Choi Jeho lowered the window beside him too. Wind rushed in from both sides. Park Juu’s hair turned into a complete mess.

"How is it?"

The air cooled down immediately. Park Juu just sat there blankly without saying anything. All he’d done was get hit by a bit of spring wind, yet his face had already turned red.

The columbarium we visited early that morning was quiet. We were the only visitors there. The sound of shoe heels striking marble echoed through the space.

Park Juu asked an employee for directions and found the memorial chamber. Once we arrived at the wall lined densely with compartments, he slowly moved along comparing the labels on the chamber with the screen on his phone one by one.

Park Juu said he had never once come here before.

"Until elementary school... my aunt and uncle came by themselves. They thought it might traumatize me."

They probably couldn’t bear to bring along a nephew whose wounds hadn’t fully healed yet.

I had heard that even recently, when Park Juu asked where his parents were resting, his aunt had worried a great deal about whether it was really okay to tell him.

She had probably watched I’m the Longest. It was natural for her concern to grow. Park Juu had said with a smile that his aunt only gave him the address and location after hearing he would be coming together with the members.

"After I grew up, I just... stopped coming. Because if I came here... I didn’t know what I was supposed to do."

The day the competition ended, Park Juu gathered the members together and explained everything.

I still hear hallucinations. My obsession with white things and cleaning is my own psychological problem, not because I think the members are dirty.

Every single behavior had wounds behind it. Park Juu said that even if it took time, he wanted to carefully stitch those wounds back together. The reason he hadn’t been able to visit his family was probably because too many wounds had been holding him back.

Walking ahead of us, Park Juu suddenly stopped at one spot.

Then he slowly bent down and crouched.

At eye level with Park Juu sat two urn compartments.

"Wow."

Park Juu placed a hand against the glass door. A small photograph reflected inside.

"My mom looks so young..."

As though stroking someone’s hair, Park Juu gently brushed his hand over the photo beyond the glass.

"He looks more like my older brother than my dad. In a few more years... he’ll look like my friend."

Without even making any move to call an employee and place the flowers he’d brought, Park Juu remained there for a long time.

Choi Jeho and I stepped outside to give him some time alone. The weather was nice.

Silence settled between us as we sat down on a bench.

"You knew we were coming here?"

"You think I came without knowing?"

Choi Jeho shot back irritably. Then, after a brief pause, as if reconsidering something, he corrected himself.

"I came because I knew."

"What?"

The nuance shifted slightly. It no longer sounded like he had simply tagged along; it sounded like he believed this was somewhere he needed to come.

"He told me roughly what happened last night."

"...Ah."

"It didn’t feel right to just tell him to go by himself."

Looking out at the neatly maintained landscaping, Choi Jeho added quietly. It reminded me of something he had said long ago that sounded completely different from the Choi Jeho now.

"If someone suddenly tells you to get lost, of course it feels like shit. Isn’t it natural for the mood to get wrecked?"

"You’ve changed a lot."

"Who knows."

Choi Jeho leaned back against the bench. Even in the past, Park Juu had apparently thought of Choi Jeho as an older guy he could rely on. Maybe to Park Juu, Choi Jeho had always been a decent older brother figure, both then and now.

"...You guys were here?"

Park Juu’s voice came from above us. He was holding his phone, apparently having searched for us. Choi Jeho let out an "Ah."

So that idiot really hadn’t answered his calls.

"Did you greet them properly?"

"Yeah."

"You did well."

I brushed myself off and stood up. The three of us walked down toward the parking lot with Park Juu in the middle.

"Next time, let’s all come together."

"...Huh?"

"Today only Jeho and I came to see them with you."

As though he had never even considered everyone coming, Park Juu awkwardly avoided our eyes.

He probably felt bad asking even the younger members to come with him. And Jeong Seongbin too, his friend.

It would have been even harder to ask Lee Cheonghyeon to arrange a memorial song.

"If the others say they’re okay with it..."

"Yeah. And when you’re emotionally ready too. If you don’t feel up to it, you can just drag me or Choi Jeho here instead."

"I can really do that?"

"Of course. Look at my shoulders and his. We can handle you sleeping with your head against us for two hours, so tell us anytime."

"Next time I won’t sleep...!"

Embarrassed after having slept the whole way there, Park Juu hurriedly started making excuses. Yet even after all that, he slept soundly the entire ride back too. I couldn’t help laughing under my breath while covering him with a blanket.

They had overcome harsh trials, but the aftermath of the storm still remained. Too many things had happened, and Spark themselves—along with the fans and the company—needed time to breathe.

Giving Spark a vacation would not help improve the fandom atmosphere. Even if they increased their own content output, the lack of planning time would likely only spark criticism over low quality, leading people to say they would’ve been better off not doing it at all.

With things like this, variety show appearances became desperately important. Not static interviews or documentary-style content, but something funny.

And for Spark, there happened to be a perfect opportunity to make their exhausted, worn-out Sparklers laugh again.

"‘Deserted Rest Island’ sent us another casting offer?"

The show that had greatly contributed to Spark’s rise in public recognition had once again sent UA a love call.

The deserted-island environment itself was harsh, but the program’s actual difficulty wasn’t particularly high. Deserted Rest Island wasn’t the kind of show that involved brutal labor or extreme energy expenditure.

The weather was good too. By the scheduled filming date at the end of March, neither Korea during departure nor the filming location itself would be excessively hot or cold. Considering just how massively successful the previous Deserted Rest Island appearance had been, this was a valuable opportunity.

The problem was that the production team had attached conditions.

"They specifically said... they’d really like Jeho and Giyeon to come, plus one more member."

The Sandbag Duo had become mandatory participants.

Yeah, well. Every clip featuring those two had pulled five million views apiece on MeTube, so of course they wanted to experience that glory again...

Thanks to that, the group’s image was now teetering on the edge of disaster again. We had barely managed to rebuild things into the "definition of gorgeous," and now one attempt at mood recovery threatened to turn the image straight back into a tropical rainforest. It genuinely felt like the sky was collapsing.

"I don’t mind going out again."

"I’m good with it too."

Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon said something utterly irresponsible.

You two going wasn’t the problem. The real crisis was whichever member had to go together with you. One poor soul had to get trapped between these two catastrophic idiots.

Honestly, I wanted to go myself. More precisely, I couldn’t trust sending those lunatics off unsupervised while sober. I really didn’t want to relive the helpless experience of sitting in front of a TV after everything was over, watching Choi Jeho and Kang Giyeon perform some prehistoric survival show.

But once again, my volunteering was firmly rejected.

Honestly, I had expected to get turned down this time too. There was no way they were sending someone who had been coughing up blood from his nose and stomach until recently onto a shoot that required long-distance flights.

If I’d known things would end up like this, I should’ve managed my health more aggressively. I suddenly understood the meaning of the "#regretfulmalelead" hashtag I’d seen on web novel platforms.

Still, sending the others instead...

Lee Cheonghyeon had to be excluded immediately. His schedule had already been overloaded for ages.

Jeong Seongbin’s situation was slightly better than Lee Cheonghyeon’s, but not by much. Being the leader of an idol group involved far more responsibilities than what appeared on the surface. Knowing Jeong Seongbin’s personality, he would probably try to keep handling communication with the company even from a deserted island, and I didn’t want to pile even more work onto him.

Park Juu was even less possible.

Just as I was about to reopen negotiations by preemptively offering to undergo a comprehensive medical checkup...

"Could I go...?"

...Park Juu volunteered for the shoot that came packaged together with airplanes, bugs, and outdoor sleeping.